Oracle boosts marketing by acquiring Responsys
New reports suggest that the rivalry between Oracle and Salesforce.com is heating up, with Oracle making the most recent move.
In order to improve its marketing automation offerings, the company recently announced that it would purchase Responsys, a San Bruno, California-based firm that specializes in multi-channel marketing. According to an article on Gigaom, the deal will be for approximately $1.5 billion.
"The addition of Responsys extends Oracle's Customer Experience Cloud, which includes Commerce, Sales, Service, Social and the Oracle Marketing Cloud," Oracle said in a company statement. "By brining together Responsys and Oracle Eloqua in the Marketing Cloud, for the first time CMOs that support industries with B2C or B2B business models will be equipped to drive exceptional customer experiences across marketing interactions and throughout the customer lifecycle from a single platform."
Analyst Mark Moerdler told the news source that he expects this deal to lead to many future mergers as companies like Oracle seek out specialized partners. Indeed, Salesforce.com has already bought ExactTarget for $2.5 billion this year, while Adobe Systems has purchased Neolane for $600 million. If that is indeed true, it is clear that many more companies will have a need for a mergers and acquisitions firm in the coming months.
Responsys stockholders must approve the proposed transaction and the deal is expected to close in early 2014.
"[W]e'll be able to accelerate our vision of giving marketers across all industries the most advanced platform for orchestrating customer experiences over time and across channels," read a Responsys press release. "We couldn't be more thrilled about what this means for our customers and employees."